The D: drive is usually a secondary hard drive installed on a computer, often used to hold the restore partition or to provide additional disk storage space. You may decide to clean off the contents of the D: drive to free up some space or perhaps because the computer is being assigned to another worker in your office. In the Windows operating system, you can easily format the D: drive. Doing so will clean the disk completely, erasing all programs and files from the drive.

1. Back up all essential files from the D: drive before you start the formatting process.

2. Click the "Start" button and type “Disk Management” in the search box.

About the Author

Erin McManaway holds a B.A. in professional writing from Francis Marion University, where she earned the Richard B. Larsen Memorial Award for Business and Technical Writing. She has worked in materials development, media and information technology in the nonprofit sector since 2006. McManaway has also been a writer and editor since 2008.